Farmers protest new rules on water quality

Farmers protested new water-quality regulations Thursday, saying the proposed rules would bury them in paperwork and chisel away at their profits without necessarily improving pollution.

Alex Breitler

Farmers protested new water-quality regulations Thursday, saying the proposed rules would bury them in paperwork and chisel away at their profits without necessarily improving pollution.

Close to 300 people, most of them growers, showed up at the Robert J. Cabral Agricultural Center for a meeting with state officials.

For the farmers, it was an opportunity to share their worries before the regulations are approved in March. Those regulations were described Thursday by an attorney for the farmers as perhaps the most significant new rules imposed on agriculture in at least a decade.

Farmers are not regulated under the federal Clean Water Act, but state legislation passed in 1999 compelled Central Valley water-quality officials to take action to clean up polluted runoff from farms.

They put temporary programs in place allowing farmers to join coalitions that would monitor water quality in nearby streams and rivers, study pollution trends and encourage landowners to adopt better methods of working their land.

The permanent program, which is under consideration, goes a step further, including not only rivers and streams but also the groundwater beneath a farmer's property.

Farmers would have to write plans detailing how they will apply fertilizer to their fields. Nitrates, a component of fertilizer, can be a health hazard when it seeps into underground drinking water supplies; state officials say that 6 percent of local wells have contained nitrates at a level that exceeded standards.

The fertilizer plans would have to be certified by an expert. Farm management plans and erosion plans would also be required.

All of this adds to the cost of compliance. Farmers already pay $2.75 per acre to belong to the existing coalition; they project that will increase to $5 per acre or perhaps even $10 per acre, arguing that the coalition will have to add new employees to review all of the new planning documents.

"All these costs just start exploding," said Jack Hamm, president of the San Joaquin Farm Bureau Federation.

Coalition members will simply drop out, the farmers said, thwarting any hope of actually reducing pollution.

If the reports were not required every year, that might relieve some of the burden, they suggested.

Pamela Creedon, executive officer of the water board, responded to these criticisms by pointing out that while farmers believe the new rules are too strict, environmentalists have said they are not strict enough.

The management plans will help officials find out what impact farmers' practices have on groundwater, she said. Right now, they don't know.

"We've heard a lot, and I believe it's true, that there are some very good practices out there," Creedon said. "(But) no one can come to us and tell us that those practices do, in fact, protect groundwater quality."

Board members said farmers' concerns would be taken into consideration as the rules are refined in the coming months.